Establishing proper timeframes for storing sensitive or private documents is essential to efficient company guidelines. Keeping documents for too short a period of time may negatively impact business operations or customer interactions. On the other hand, retaining documents for too long may violate rules or legal requirements and expose data to risk.

The purpose of this policy, written by Scott Matteson for TechRepublic Premium, is to provide guidelines for the appropriate retention and disposal of physical and electronic documents.

Featured text from the policy:

COMPLIANCE STIPULATIONS

It is the policy of the company that its records be retained only during the period of their immediate use unless longer retention is required by federal, state or local law, rule, regulation, or for litigation purposes or regulatory investigations. Therefore, any paper records and electronic files that are part of any of the categories listed in the Records Retention Schedule (see below) must be retained no longer than the amount of time indicated in the Records Retention Schedule.

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(NB. This policy is intended to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. That is a United States federal law.)